


Jean's mother deserves a visit

by orphan_account



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Bertholdt wilds out in his sleep and we all know it, Connie snores, Eren misses his mum, Jean appreciate your mum dammit, Other, Watch the Jean OVA, lowkey outed bertholdt as the colossal titan lol, ok sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:28:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27350497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "You should be nicer to your mother, Jean-b- I mean, Jean." Eren had said, hurrying to pick up discarded apples that Jean had flung to the floor in anger, before politely turning back to Jean's mother, gently placing the apples back into her open basket- which, now that Jean thought about it, was a massive contrast to the way Jean had later roughly pushed her out of the door, and slammed it when she had left.-Eren gets mad at Jean for mistreating his mother and Jean gets mad at Eren for getting mad.But Jean's always been an intelligent boy, and an unpleasant conversation with the suicidal blockhead makes him realise that maybe Eren isn't being completely unreasonable.[set after OVA 2]
Comments: 5
Kudos: 30





	Jean's mother deserves a visit

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't watched the Jean OVA you won't know what's going on.  
> Spoiler warning, I guess? 
> 
> I was gonna name this 'Pillow talk, but not that kind' but that's not very appropriate-

Jean, for the rest of the evening, was in a great mood, a smile gracing his face- not a smug smirk, as would usually be expected of him, but a genuinely happy grin. 

His triumph over Sasha had left him in high spirits, and Sasha was a good sport; she didn't whine like most people would and instead begged Jean to make her an omelette too- which he profusely ignored, obviously. 

Jean was considering visiting his mother after all, but he never got round to doing so. After dinner, the cadets had to go for another round of drills, which had lasted all the way till ten o'clock, and then they'd been sent to their barracks for sleep- they'd have to be up at six tomorrow, anyway. 

Jean went to bed feeling content, yet he couldn't sleep; Connie was snoring as obnoxiously loud as ever, and Bertholdt (even on normal days, annoyingly) wouldn't stop shifting in his sleep, making the bunkbed he was sleeping in creak loudly under his weight. If Jean hadn’t known any better, he would have thought that the bed would snap in half. 

Somebody- presumably Bertholdt, for obvious reasons- rolled over and hit the wall, and Eren tutted loudly, groaning. "Stop moving, Bertholdt, I’m trying to sleep." he hissed, not loud enough to wake anyone up, but still audible enough that Jean, who was still awake, could hear. 

"Still awake, Eren?" He scoffed, and Eren huffed loudly. 

"Shut up, Jean-boy." 

Jean sat bolt upright, shaking his fist angrily, and promptly banged his head on the bed above his, making Marco, who was still sound asleep, shift a little. He hissed in pain and rubbed his head, and Eren snickered in the dark. 

"Shut up." He laid back down, grumbling. 

"Did you even go and see your mum, Jean?" Eren asked, and it would be a criminal understatement to simply state that Jean was surprised by the question. 

It was too dark for Jean to see the other boy's face, or even his body language, but for whatever reason, Eren sounded annoyed. Then again, this was Eren he was speaking too, and Eren always sounded annoyed, but something else was in his tone- underlying emotion that Jean couldn't quite place a finger on. 

Jean shook his head, even if Eren couldn't see it. "No, I never did." He said carefully, and in all honesty, he was intrigued to hear the other boy's answer. 

"Why not?" Jean could practically hear Eren rolling his eyes. 

"Never got round to doing so." Jean furrowed his brow. What was his problem with what Jean did in his own spare time? He ought to mind his own business. 

"Sure you didn't. Thomas Wagner managed to go see his mother. You're just a little bratty boy, that's what, and all you can do is make your mother's life hard, you little problem child. Is it so hard to go and say hello, and see how she’s doing? You don’t even know when you’ll next see her!" 

"What's Thomas Wagner got to do with anything?" Jean was getting seriously annoyed and was struggling to keep his voice down. "You shut up. You don't know anything, and what's your sudden obsession over my mother?" 

Silence. 

Jean scoffed and rolled over to face the wall. Eren didn't speak up, and Jean got the feeling he still had more to say, but didn’t know how to phrase it- even so, Jean was done with listening to Eren's useless chatter. 

He closed his eyes, trying to block out Connie's thunderous snoring and the incessant creaking of Bertholdt's bed, but he couldn't help but think about the events of that day. Not the way everyone had shown him up during the titan drill (Jean had already made the resolve to get twice as many fake titans down as they had tomorrow) and not even the cook-off with Sasha- he thought about when his mum came to visit him. 

His face felt like it was on fire when he remembered the way his mum had told everybody to be nice to him. Why did she always feel the need to interfere? Didn't she understand that Jean was training to be in the army, that asking people to befriend him simply wouldn't work anymore? He wasn't in school anymore; she couldn't just march in like she used to and demand that everyone be nice to her little Jean-boy (Jean hated the nickname more than anything else). Why didn't she just get the hint already, that stupid woman? 

She even had the nerve to bring him apples, and had Jean not gotten rid of her as soon as he did, she probably would have insisted that Jean share them with everybody. As if. He wasn't a five-year-old boy again, handing out nice things to people wasn't going to make any situation better for him- not that he needed to be in their favour, he was going to abandon them all when he made into the Military Police and they didn't either way. 

"You should be nicer to your mother, Jean-b- I mean, Jean." Eren had said, hurrying to pick up discarded apples that Jean had flung to the floor in anger, before politely turning back to Jean's mother, gently placing the apples back into her open basket- which, now that Jean thought about it, was a massive contrast to the way Jean had later roughly pushed her out of the door, and slammed it when she had left. 

Yes, even before, Eren had openly shown concern for Jean's relationship with his mother, and it pissed Jean off, big time. 

Who was he trying to fool, acting all kind and caring and respectful? Anybody with half a brain knew that Eren didn’t ever stop to think about the way his words would affect others, so what was he playing at? Jean preferred it when he was crying nonstop about titans, like he always was, vowing dramatically to finish them all off and hunt and kill and seek revenge- 

Seek revenge on the titans. 

Then it hit Jean like a truck. 

Titans had killed Eren's own mother. 

Jean’s eyes snapped open. It all made sense. Jean could understand why Eren was so upset when Jean had yelled at his own mum, and why he was so nice to her- he had seen his own mother brutally killed by a titan. 

Jean had to admit, he got a nasty feeling in his stomach when he imagined witnessing his mother being chomped by a titan... it didn't feel right, and he didn't want to think about it anymore. As much as the old hag pissed him off, he simply could not imagine seeing such a thing. 

Sure, Jean had witnessed a variety of ways one could be killed by a titan- he had seen soldiers crushed in vice-like grips, soldiers swallowed whole, soldiers trampled underfoot, soldiers snapped between a titan’s jaws, only to be spat out and discarded, and if they weren’t lucky enough to die then and there, they died in excruciating pain, accompanied only by the vengeful (but pitiful) cries of their comrades, too far gone to be saved. 

To think of his own mother going limp in some titan’s hand, being snapped like a twig between their jaws... it was horrifying. 

Jean couldn’t even imagine the way Eren felt, witnessing such a gruesome death at ten years old. 

“You don’t even know when you’ll next see her!” He had said before, and Jean realised in that moment what Eren had been thinking.

Jean supposed (begrudgingly, of course) that Eren’s anger towards Jean wasn’t entirely uncalled for, and maybe, just maybe, he had a point... Even if he hadn’t explicitly made the point, Jean knew he had thought it. 

“Of course I know when I’ll next see her, you suicidal blockhead.” Jean said, breaking the silence, and judging by the slight creak that emitted from Eren’s bed as he shifted, the other boy had heard. 

“You don’t know that for certain!” Came Eren’s immediate reply, anger lacing into his tone. 

“What happens if titans attack again, or if that Colossal Titan shows his ugly face and kicks down Wall Rose’s gate too? You’re a cadet, you don’t even know what could happen... you could get eaten! Even worse...” 

His voice trailed off, letting the silence hang in the air again... Or it would have, if Bertholdt didn’t suddenly give off a loud snore and do what sounded like a full 180 in his bed, but even the thud of his leg hitting the wall abruptly did nothing to ease the silence between Jean and Eren. 

Jean knew exactly what Eren was thinking. 

'Even worse, your mother could get eaten too.'

Jean scoffed. “Don’t patronise me, you ugly pig. I’m going to see her tomorrow, during lunch hour, and I'll be glad to not see your ugly hyena face for a bit.” 

There was another silence, and Eren huffed, turning over in his bed. “Not like your ugly horse face is any better, Jean-boy.” 

Jean didn’t miss the slight change of tone, and he could practically hear the small smile in his voice. 

“Call me that one more time and I'll make you see stars.” He retorted, but in good humour, and Eren scoffed. 

And that was the end of it. 

Jean was just drifting off to sleep, and he swore he heard Eren mutter “Who knows, maybe I'll see her too, just one more time.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, I know this was so pointless and had no plot but oh well. 
> 
> Also, if anyone caught Bertholdt lowkey outing himself as the Colossal Titan, no you didn't ;)  
> I mean, it's just a pure coincidence that he managed to kick the wall in his sleep straight after Eren said the Colossal Titan might kick Wall Rose, isn't it? 
> 
> Lol yws idk what this is but who tf cares


End file.
